Right Wing Nation

You can now buy beer at Wegman’s. (It’s Wegman’s. How much do you want to bet they don’t carry Budweiser?)

You might wonder why I care, given that I don’t drink, ever. Well, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean nobody who might be in the house does. But you really need to understand how idiotic Pennsylvania’s state-controlled alcohol sales system is to really understand why I think this is (too little of) a good thing.

You’re saying, “We have state-controlled alcohol sales.” Yeah, lots of states do, but not nearly as idiotic as Pennsylvania’s. So here’s a run-down of the state laws on alcohol sales.

• If you want two six-packs or less of beer, you can only buy it at a beer store or a bar.
• If you want a case or more, you can only buy it at a beer distributor.
• If you want wine or liquor, you can only buy it at a wine and spirits store.

If you’re throwing a party, then, you have to go to the supermarket to buy the food, the beer store or distributor (depending on how much you want to buy) to get the beer, and the wine and spirits store to buy the wine and/or liquor. Seriously. But that’s not all, oh no, it’s must stupider than that. From Everything2:

• Selection is awful. Distribution choices are not made at the local level, and if the store doesn’t have what you’re looking for, you have to pay a hefty delivery charge to get that special Merlot for your family reunion dinner.
• Distribution of stores per area is limited by the population of the county, in theory. In practice, pork-barrel politics has introduced enough exceptions to render the actual distribution somewhat arbitrary. At one time, there were less stores in Pennsylvania than there were in the city of Dallas.
• Service sucks. By law. Employees are forbidden to recommend any specific brand of alcohol.
• High prices. There are a ton of taxes that you have to pay on your alcohol. An expose was done on this in the 1980s. It turned out that some of the taxes were highly suspect; for instance a ‘flood relief’ tax was going to pay for flooding damage that had been done in the 1930s.
• Poor management. It’s hard to imagine losing money when you’re the only person in town that can sell alcohol, but somehow Pennsylvania manages to do it.

Contrast this bizarre system with Indiana, where all you need to sell alcohol is a liquor license. Throwing a party in Indiana? Pick up all the food, supplies, beer, wine, and liquor at Sam’s Club. Or if Sam’s doesn’t have all of the food items you need, go to one of the countless supermarket/pharmacy combo stores, where you can pick up the food, beer, and wine in the supermarket part, and the liquor in the pharmacy part. One trip.

Here’s another advantage: Competition. Here, beer, wine, liquor, all are the same price no matter where you buy them, because the prices are all set and sold by the state. In Indiana, private businesses compete, and if the Maker’s Mark at the liquor store across the street is too expensive for your blood, you can always buy it at another store that sells it cheaper. The one downside of buying liquor in pharmacies is that it’s often more expensive than it is at Sam’s or liquor stores.

The only odd liquor law in Indiana is no sales on Sundays. That’s no carry-out sales. Bars are open, and you can get beer or wine with dinner at a restaurant.

Pennsylvania needs to ditch all of these commie liquor laws. There is no excuse for them.

Speaking of good things, that &^@#! clinic is going to open August 4. What the story doesn’t tell you is that the clinic has been going up for over a year. I know, you see, because it’s about one-tenth of a mile down the road. We’ve been putting up with held-up traffic, noise, mess, you name it for over a year.

And it’s not going to open until August?

Anybody from Indiana would be aghast at how slowly any kind of construction proceeds here. Usually, nobody was even at the construction site. They’re all union employees, and it’s a mystery what days the union allows them to work, but most days, they’re off. Construction on the weekends, are you kidding? There isn’t even construction on weekdays in this state.

Contrast this with that business that burned in Phillipsburg a few months back. Instead of hiring union contractors, they hired the Amish. The work was done in two weeks.

See, now this is exactly why I have trouble with all this howling about illegals working for less than Americans. Every time I hear that argument, I see all of the construction that is never worked on here, and the Amish working 10-12 hour days.